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Glenn Zaleski

Glenn Zaleski is one of the most in-demand pianists on the New York City jazz scene. Originally from Boylston, MA, Glenn has made a name for himself playing with the likes of Ravi Coltrane, Lage Lund, and Ari Hoenig. His debut album, My Ideal, was released in March of 2015 on Sunnyside, and has been receiving critical acclaim: Downbeat Magazine named it “sublime”, Jazz Times called it, “an engaging set by a talent worth watching,” and the New York Times named the record a “strong statement”, praising its “fluent but unhurried sense of phrase”.

Glenn has also released two popular albums with the collective Stranahan/Zaleski/Rosato: Limitless (Capri 2013), and Anticipation (Capri 2011), as well as a duo record with his brother, saxophonist Mark Zaleski. (Duet Suite, 2010)

In 2011, Glenn was a semi-finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, as well as a finalist for the 2011 APA Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz. He attended the Brubeck Institute Fellowship program in Stockton, CA from 2005-2007, and then finished his undergraduate studies at The New School in 2009. From 2009-2011, while working towards his graduate degree at NYU, Glenn was also on NYU faculty, teaching a variety of classes and private students.

Awards

2007: APA Cole Porter Fellowship - Finalist
2011: APA Cole Porter Fellowship - Finalist
2011: Thelonious Monk Competition - Semi-Finalist

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 19, 2024

Having formed his jazz octet in 2016 for a project at City College of New York, where he was then teaching, Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist Jon De Lucia had to find new music to keep it going--a search that led him to the archives at Mills College, which housed many of Dave Brubeck's original handwritten charts among the papers of the octet's tenor saxophonist and arranger, Dave Van Kriedt. Eight years later, after extensive research, much hard work ...

Album Review

Mareike Wiening: Reveal

Read "Reveal" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
October 15, 2024

Registrato a Brooklyn e prodotto da Dave Douglas, quest'album della batterista tedesca Mareike Wiening, alla testa del suo quintetto, dà conto dei suoi sei anni di esperienza newyorchese, durante i quali ha avuto modo di perfezionare la propria esperienza jazzistica e di lavorare con musicisti del calibro di John Zorn, Ben Wendel, Stefon Harris e lo stesso Douglas, presente qui come espite in tre brani. La formazione, piuttosto classica, interpreta sette composizioni della Wiening e una originale rielaborazione ...

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Glenn Zaleski: Opus de Funk

by John Chacona
September 4, 2024

We don't hear enough about Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver these days. With a centennial arriving in 2028, now's the time--anytime is the time--to dig the very hip tunes composed by this godfather of hard bop. And that's just what pianist Glenn Zaleski does on Star Dreams (Sunnyside, 2024). “Opus de Funk" is one of Horace Silver's most covered compositions--and why not? Even your fourth-grade music teacher could swing this surefire line, and Zaleski's trio do so with evident joy. ...

Album Review

Ken Peplowski: Unheard Bird

Read "Unheard Bird" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 3, 2024

Even when the recording (in this case, two) is a classic--as, for example, Charlie Parker's memorable Bird with Strings (Mercury Records, 1950)--some songs that deserve better are necessarily left on the cutting-room floor. Some may see that as disappointing, while others--like reed specialist Ken Peplowski--embrace it as an opportunity. On Unheard Bird, Peplowski--with strings and a core quartet--presents a series of fourteen generally likable themes, most of which were destined for Parker's album but were somehow passed over, and three ...

Album Review

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 28, 2024

Synchronicity is a wondrous thing. Item: At around the same time that Albert Ayler was developing his sound in the U.S.A., the Ethiopian tenor saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya was forging a strikingly similar one in Addis Ababa. Neither player had heard the other, and Mekurya had never heard any jazz at all. Feel the Force? Rewind a decade or so and we encounter another space/time portal, this one connecting the U.S.A.'s East Coast and West Coast. In New ...

Album Review

9 Horses: Strum

by Neil Duggan
June 26, 2024

There are no prizes for guessing that this album from 9 Horses is called Strum because every track features the sound of a strummed instrument. There are over 20 stringed instruments involved, with mandolins, violins, guitars, banjos, basses and pianos, in various combinations, forming the main components. They are strummed, plucked or otherwise coaxed into life by a core trio of mandolinist Joe Brent, violinist Sara Caswell and bassist Andrew Ryan. Although there are many stringed instruments, that does nothing ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
May 13, 2024

Exuberance is part of a “long-form tonal conversation" between two award-winning artists in complementary fields, composer Christopher Zuar and animator Anne Beal. Zuar, a Long Island New Yorker, describes the work as “a journey of personal growth," which began in 2017 when he and Beal met as fellows at the MacDowell Colony in the woods of New Hampshire. He explains that the album is a “collaborative project that charts the last seven years of our lives." “In Winter ...

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